A Tralee firm has been chosen to be part of an international ground-breaking project to improve crops’ tolerance to stresses caused by climate change.
Biotechnology firm BioAtlantis is teaming up with leading global scientific institutes to work on the EU-funded CropPrime project.
CropPrime will focus on developing new technologies to enhance crop yield under stressful conditions caused by climate change.
These include the development of plant biostimulant products derived from sources such as seaweed as well as RNA-fungicides to reduce fungal infection in crops.
(RNA is a nucleic acid similar to DNA, but with only a single, helical strand of bases.)
The findings of this research will lead to the development of a new generation of sustainable agri-tech products that will help crop growers to ‘prime’ and protect their crops against adverse conditions such as drought, heat, cold and water-logging, stresses that are increasing due to climate change.
BioAtlantis is an Irish-owned marine biotechnology company employing over 50 people at its headquarters in Tralee.
CropPrime is a pan-European network which consists of leading plant research centres and academic institutions including the James Hutton Institute in the UK, Mendel University in the Czech Republic, and VIB-Plant Systems Biology in Belgium.
There are also institutes from outside of the EU involved in the project – the University of Johannesburg, South Africa and the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology in Rosario, Argentina.
CropPrime is funded up to €1 million under the EU's HORIZON-Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions programme.
For more information, visit https://www.cropprime.eu/ and http://www.bioatlantis.com
